OTHER ELECTRONICS

UPDATE

September 2006

McIlvaine Company

Dell to Construct a New Plant in India

Dell plans to commence operations at the new facility in the outskirts of Chennai by the first half of 2007, after completing related equipment installation. The Chennai unit will initially manufacture desktops, which account for 70 percent of its business in India. Dell computer shipments grew dramatically by 82 percent a quarter earlier in India, while revenues also soared by 63 percent, the paper added

Vietnam to Simplify Investment Procedures

Vietnam will empower the People's Committees of cities and provinces, and management boards of industrial parks and export processing zones nationwide to license nearly all kinds of domestic and foreign-invested projects.

Under a draft decree on guiding the implementation of the new Investment Law, taking effect in July, the committees and the boards will have the rights to either directly consider and license most of projects or indirectly license some projects which are earlier approved by the prime minister. The prime minister is in charge of approving projects in some limited fields, including construction of airports, air transport, building and running national seaports, mineral exploration and exploration, broadcasting and television, and casino, and if projects in the fields have already been listed in Vietnam's development plans, investors do not have to submit them to the prime minister for approval.

Vietnam plans to attract 30-34 billion dollars of foreign direct investment (FDI) between 2006 and 2010. Under a draft program on enticing FDI from 2006 to 2010 worked out by the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the country is anticipated to attract 22-24 billion dollars of fresh FDI and 8-10 billion dollars of additional capital of operational projects.

To this end, Vietnam will strongly encourage foreign investment in information technology, electronics, micro-electronics, biotechnology, basic technology, auxiliary industries, agro- processing, realty trading, tourism, healthcare, education and training.

Vietnam is expected to attract FDI worth 6.8 billion dollars next year, up from anticipated 6.5 billion dollars this year. Of the FDI in 2007, between $5 billion and $6 billion is expected to be fresh investment, and the rest additional capital of operational projects, according to the ministry's Foreign Investment Department.

Korean Giants Invade Eastern Europe

Korean electronics companies and carmakers are flocking to Eastern Europe, building factories to make forays into the European market, the world’s largest and moving assembly lines from Western European countries to the former Warsaw Pact nations. Samsung SDI said Sunday it decided to build new plasma display panel assembly plant near the Hungarian capital Budapest to meet increasing demand for PDPs in Europe. Samsung SDI will invest around US$100 million in the new facilities and has started construction with the goal of going into operations next year. Samsung SDI CEO Kim Soon-tak and other executives attended a ceremony marking completion of the frame there last week. Samsung Electronics also plans to invest $500 million in its Galanta, Slovakia digital TV assembly plant. The electronics giant reportedly bought a large industrial site near that area to boost its digital TV production volume there.

LG Electronics is to invest an additional $100 million in digital TV manufacturing facilities in Wroclaw and Mlawa in Poland by 2010 to dramatically increase production there. “Our LCD TV plant being built near Wroclaw will start operation on Sept. 25 and put its first finished TV into the European market next month,” LG Electronics’ digital display chief Yoon Sang-han said.

The European market is emerging as the world’s largest in the digital TV field, accounting for a whopping 40 percent of global sales. Demand for digital TVs (some 20 million this year) is poised to grow almost 50 percent a year. Manufacturing facilities there make economic sense in helping to reduce expenses and avoid high tariffs. Digital TVs are large, and manufacturing them in Korea or China and then exporting them to Europe entails huge logistics costs, while Eastern Europe offers labor at a 50 percent lower costs than Western Europe. Assembling products in the local market is also a far better way of maintaining price competitiveness as parts are subject to exemption or suspension of import tariffs of usually more than 10 percent.

The Hyundai Automotive Group has also started building a production belt in Eastern Europe. Subsidiary Kia Motors is to start mass production at a factory in Slovakia capable of turning out 300,000 medium-size cars annually within the year, and Hyundai is to build a new factory in the Czech Republic some 100 km away from Kia’s Slovakia plant.

Dell Inc. Selected Lodz, Poland, as Location for $150 Million PC Factory

Dell Inc. has selected Lodz, Poland, as the location for a €120 million (about US$150 million) PC factory investment. It is expected to create 12,000 jobs at the factory and in related businesses and would make Dell one of the largest private employers in Poland the reports said.

With LG’s existing two FPD TV production lines in Mlawa that between them now have a capacity for 4 million LCD TV and PDP TV sets per annum — and additional investment set to increase this to 6 million units by 2010 — LG will become the largest FPD TV maker in Europe with an overall annual production capacity of 11 million units.

LG said it has invested about $110 million in the second production line in Mlawa which began operations last October. The company said it expects to boost combined annual sales revenues from the three Polish FPD TV production lines from this year’s projected $2.5 billion to $6.5 billion by 2010.

The bulk of the capacity is destined for European markets, which accounts for some 40 percent of the global digital TV market, according LG. LG also said it aims to become the top PDP TV maker next year and the leading LCD TV supplier in Europe in 2008.

Isola Group Announced Upgrades to the Singapore Manufacturing Facility

Isola Group, SARL, a designer, developer and manufacturer of high performance base materials for the printed circuit board industry, announced extensive upgrades to the Singapore manufacturing facility.  The $6.6 MM upgrades include a new multilayer material press line with a state-of-the-art Aiki automated build up system.  The Aiki system comes with associated automation enclosed in a new 1K capable clean room facility, with upgraded laminate fabrication capabilities.  In addition to supporting continuous quality improvement, these upgrades will increase capacity by 1.3 MM square feet of laminate per month, significantly reducing lead-time and enhancing quick turn around capability. According to Robert Haskins, President Isola Asia, “The new multi-layer press line and Aiki system give us another tool to service not only local markets but all of Isola’s key global customers.

NANOTECHNOLOGY

Argonne National Laboratory Opens Center for Nanoscale Materials

The U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory is moving to the forefront of the materials science revolution today with the opening of its Center for Nanoscale Materials.

Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, about 70,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

“Argonne's new Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of five DOE facilities that our Office of Science is building to provide the nation's research community with state-of-the-art resources,” Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said. “The fundamental research conducted at the center is expected to accelerate the revolution that has already begun in nanotechnology and lead to a better understanding of the behavior of nanomaterials.”

At the nanoscale, the physical, chemical and biological properties of materials differ in fundamental and valuable ways from the properties of individual atoms and molecules or bulk matter. “It's hard to imagine a technology that won't be impacted by nanoscience, including biotechnology, computation, materials development and energy technology,” said Eric Isaacs, center director. "The list is endless."

The Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne will integrate nanoscale research with Argonne's existing capabilities in synchrotron X-ray studies, neutron-based materials research and electron microscopy with new capabilities in nanosynthesis, nanofabrication, nanomaterials characterization, and theory and simulation. The center is one of five being built at national laboratories across the country as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Nanoscale Science Research Center program under the Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

Nanoparticles are dominated by surfaces and interfaces with other materials, therefore it's important to understand how they relate to a material's atomic structure and surface chemistry. This is where a number of disciplines come into play, including materials physics, surface chemistry and organic chemistry. For example, it has been recently demonstrated that the color of the emission from a semiconductor nanoparticle can be controlled not only by size, but by binding a single or a few organic molecules to the surface.

Researchers hope this facility will lead to the creation of new materials that transcend the performance-limiting present-day materials and processes. These materials, incorporated into new devices and applications — such as ultra strong permanent magnet nano-composites, magnetic electronics and sensors, solar energy conversion and storage systems, and molecular conductors — offer specific functionality for diverse energy-related applications.

Work at the CNM will also look at integrating novel materials, specifically bio-organic and inorganic materials. This research will lead to the creation of entirely new classes of materials with tailored functionalities coupled with individual components.

The center will also have the multidisciplinary ability to mix and combine materials with patterning. “We want to go beyond making materials and create novel devices,” Isaacs said.

The center's mission also includes the development of state-of-the-art tools, which includes a joint project with the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne to develop the world's best X-ray microscope to study these novel materials. “If you're making little things,” Isaacs notes, “you need a tool to look at them. The resolving power of this instrument will be 1,000 times better than an optical microscope,” said Isaacs. “Since X-rays can penetrate materials non-destructively, researchers will be able to determine the three-dimensional structure of nanoparticles embedded in host materials or under growth conditions. Using this tool to characterize extremely small structures will help build, atom by atom, new materials with desired properties.”

Another part of the facility unique to the Midwest and crucial to the development of nanomaterials is an 11,000-square-foot clean room with state-of-the-art nanofabrication capabilities. “When you're trying to make small materials, the smallest speck of dust is huge and can easily spoil the material,” said Isaacs.

The center is now in the early phase of accepting users. Over the next year and a half it will fill with people and tools until it is fully operational in October 2008. The center was built as a joint partnership between the Department of Energy and the State of Illinois. The State of Illinois provided $36 million for the 85,000-square-foot building. The Department of Energy is providing $36 million to develop and build the facility's advanced instrumentation and will provide the necessary funds for its operation as a user facility.

“We expect the CNM to attract hundreds of researchers to Argonne each year,” said Isaacs. “What they accomplish here will forever change how we view materials and how we put them to work to improve our world.”
The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory conducts basic and applied scientific research across a wide spectrum of disciplines, ranging from high-energy physics to climatology and biotechnology. Since 1990, Argonne has worked with more than 600 companies and numerous federal agencies and other organizations to help advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for the future. Argonne is managed by the University of Chicago for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.